murderer charles manson and robert kennedy's assassin, sirhan sirhan, are among the most notorious inmates6, allegations against staff brought the prison to its knees. officers were accused of arranging gladiator-style fights between rival inmates that often had to be stopped with lethal force. >> officers betting on these fights, who's going to win, who's going to be stabbed, who's going to kill who, who's going to beat who bad. >> all of the indicted officers were subsequently acquitted. george galaza was warden at the time and had to tackle the daunting task of getting corcoran back on its feet. >> when i got here in 1996, corcoran frankly was under an intensive media barrage. the impact that that had on the staff here, it was tremendous. you cannot maintain a prison like this well if your staff morale is poor. so the first part of it was getting the staff morale up. the next thing that we focused on was the issue of violence. >> you might have to fight. >> in a prison like this one, because of the types of inmates that we have, violence is a real thing. >> you might have to kill, you m

. >> this population includes infamous criminals like juan corona, sirhan sirhan, and manson. built to hold the most violent offenders in the state, corcoran has seen its share of brutality. today, a fresh group of inmates arrives at receiving and release, no doubt aware of this prison's reputation. >> when i get on the bus, they called your names out to come off the bus, and they're teary-eyed coming to corcoran. it's a shock to them. i guess they have heard a lot about corcoran. >> what do you know about corcoran? >> what i know? i know it ain't no joke. that's what i know. i know this is serious business. >> corcoran is a pretty rough prison here. it's one of the rougher prisons. >> this is how serious it is. it's a life or death situation. it is like that. i don't care what they tell you. it is like that. okay? it is hardcore like that. >> corcoran's general population inmates are split into three main yards. the level one yard consists mainly of low security inmates, many of whom are in on parole violations. "b" yard holds the level three inmates, and "a" yard is home to

its inmate population includes charles manson, robert kennedy's assassin sirhan sirhan, and some of theent prison gangs. "lockup" crews have also been frequent guests at california state prison corcoran. >> you might have to fight. you might have to kill. you might have to stab. you never know. depends on the situation. >> a lot of times it's just fistfights out here. but i would say maybe every other month we get a righteous stabbing. when they do stab each other they go for the kill. they don't just stab each other to play around. >> every morning you wake up you dealing with a thousand different attitudes. you never know what could happen on that certain day. all you can do is think the worst, hope for the best. >> we met two inmates on the yard at corcoran who are much more pro-active when it comes to surviving life in this powder keg. they gave our crew a tutorial on how they do it. >> some of the rules that you want to live by behind these walls is you want to give everybody the same respect that you expect to receive from them. >> without order we have anarchy. when we have anarc